Australia has been continuously inhabited for at least 40,000 and possibly 100,000 years by Indigenous Australians. Various Europeans made contact with parts of the Australian coastline from the 16th Century onwards, with the first confirmed sighting in 1606 by Dutchman Willhelm Janzsoon. In the following century the Dutch mapped most of the Western and Northern coastlines yet expressed little interest in settling the continent even with a trade outpost.

In 1770 Lt. James Cook FRSRN captain of HMB Endeavour after observing the transit of Venus mapped most of the East coast of Australia and claimed that part of it that he had just explored in the name of George the Third at Possession Island on 22 August. Botanist Sir Joseph Banks, one of Cook's companions on Endeavour was later a key figure in the creation of a penal colony that came to be called N.S.W. and subsequently Australia.

The concentration of population in the southeast helped promote industrialisation, but hindered exploitation of other regions. Recent (since 2200) development of the northern (Darwin) shore has created a growing population centre capable of handling trade with Indonesia.